Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ THE WAY ( Chapter 8 )

Part 8 THE WAY

Despite the minor snarl in Duo's tone, attributed mostly to sleep deprivation and his very high metabolism that made his stomach start growling again, the directions that he gave through a tired slur were quite helpful. It wasn't simplest highway to ever be laid down and the odd, sweeping angles and crisscrossing network of paint-chipped crosswalks and dauntless city pedestrians meandering across at will were not the easiest to handle. At least, for controlling bursts of road rage. Heero himself was a very patient man and more than a qualified driver, he said, recalling how he'd gotten perfect marks in passing his driver's test.

The bohemian had been less than pleased to hear the high school memory, when Heero defended his driving ability after a slight on Duo's case, in his current sleep-deprived condition and rolled his eyes before he disappeared into the back. Soft shifting of fabric continued momentarily before the noisy con man was completely silent.

It was unnerving, somehow, thinking of how quickly he slipped out of the conscious world and how heavily he slept. Not the purring of the engine, not the jolting rhythm of the road nor the vivid sunlight would seemingly shake Duo Maxwell now. Light, chestnut brown hair spilling out beneath his immovable black baseball cap and curled up without sight of a blanket, he was a very odd sleeper. Oh, yes, and the fact that when Heero couldn't control his curiosity anymore and called him, he was as still as stone. He yelled loudly once, almost drowning out the rabid punk vocals floating across the cabin from the radio, and still, Duo either was dead to the world or somehow got a kick out of faking sleep.

He didn't seem to be waking up anytime soon, and it would be a welcomed break for Heero Yuy. Before revving the engine and reemerging into the fray of streamlined traffic lines, he leaned down and turned down the volume of the music. The raging chord progressions and erratic, eccentric and all too often very heated vocals didn't bother him, but he wasn't quite used to it, being raised in a Peacecraft household filled with operas and classical. And it was Duo's property, anyway. Even if he knew the truck was probably stolen.

Heero mulled over the last thought with dimmed eyes then sharply shook his head. The exact reason he'd pursued such a wild topic was because of the predominate prejudice against deviants such as Duo. Criminal or not, the con man was still a human being deserving a fair judgement based on character and with his faults and weaknesses taken into account, just as any just man would demand. The news report had somehow infuriated him. The Japanese man mentally snarled at himself. Automatically assuming that he had stolen the truck was just the kind of infectious thinking he was contesting in his term paper.

With an edge of anger directed at his ignorant thought, he turned the engine and Heero picked up the reins where Duo had dropped off.

The route was simple. It had to be. Neither Duo or Heero had ever navigated the particular city which they were passing through. Duo had told his passenger very little about the trip and his arcane reasons for it, but he did tell him their destination was the flourishing Cinq City and there was only one major highway leading there from their current location. If he remained on the 65, then he could steer no wrong. There were multiple other, smaller roads exiting the city that eventually winded off into the distance, but Duo strongly vied against them. Despite less police activity and fewer patrol cars lying in wait, they were indirect, interlacing courses that rarely traveled straight for Cinq. They would have to carefully find their way through the rural roads and most likely reverse direction to undo a navigation error, and that, as Duo elegantly put it, "would be a plain pain in the ass." The bohemian was willing to forgo the safety for the faster, more dangerous course. Heero had nodded compliantly.

He'd also stressed that they made good time, which had seemed strange. A con man, enforcing a rule, shaking a finger at him to make sure he was paying dead attention.

Duo had explained, before collapsing onto the bed, out cold, that there was a very important deadline to make. He had grinned weakly and commented, "No matter what. Squash the pedestrians and stray dogs in the name of the mission, if need be." Duo had laughed at the cruel, half-morose humor in his words and patted Heero chummy-like on the shoulder before falling asleep in the cramped sleeper cabin.

Heero drove uneventfully for a few hours, greeted with golden light spilling across every curve of the road, the faces of men and women bustling through their lives as he drove past. He crept slowly closer to the edge of the metropolis and eventually the green of looming trees cut the industrial gleam more and more. Driving was easy enough for him; the punk songs still raged dimly in the background and Duo seemingly was lost to dreams. Once he had just left the city for another stretch of uncompromised highway, Heero spotted a metallic gleam ahead on the highway. Perched on a slow incline beside the highway, an insignificant-looking weigh station beckoned. The single sign announcing it was old and ragged, paint chipped and coated with the scratchy black vandalism of spray paint. Unthinkingly, Heero began to turn the wheel in the direction of the weigh station, forgetting of his circumstance.

But there were definitely a few reminders.

There was breath against his neck and furtive hands slid entrancingly down the length of Heero's arms, igniting every nerve and line afire in their wake. Old bohemian sorcery. Faint traces of hair ghosted across Heero's neck and shoulder, cool against the sudden nervous, startled heat of his skin and trickling down the collar of his shirt like temptation personified. Heero stiffed as Duo's arms wrapped firmly around the outside his own arms and the voice of Eros returned. It hovered dangerously next to his ear, tinted with that subtle, effortless tone of a true bohemian seducer. "I don't think so, traveler."

"Huh?" Heero blurted instinctively.

While all was tension in Heero's muscles, Duo's hands tightened subtly around the thin Japanese wrists with seemingly enough power to crush them, but the discretion not to. "Where do you think you're going?" he purred, his voice rumbling lazily in the pit of his throat.

With a tiny appliance of pressure, paired with the overwhelming sensation of the brunet con man nuzzling "sleepily" into his neck, Heero's hands relented and let Duo take control of the wheel for a moment. After all, what would he do otherwise? Since first seeing the bohemian without the influence of alcohol, he'd realized the power that Duo had hidden in his slim frame and how unlucky he would be to somehow turn it against himself by angering him. And besides, with the constant wash of warm breath curving down his neck, he couldn't pull his attention away from it.

"That's right, drive on by," Duo purred. The underlying tone was firm and lethal at the same time and Heero swallowed half-nervously, keeping his steely blue eyes on the road. The bohemian hands pressed against his own and adjusted the wheel so that the truck whirred by the weigh station moments later. "Good boy," Duo said blankly, patting his shoulder casually and slinking back into the shadow of the cabin.

Heero paused, momentarily stopping to catch his nerves as they rattled beneath his skin, and shifted his eyes up to the glassy reflection of the rearview mirror. The sleep-haunted, grim violet eyes of the bohemian locked onto his face in the reflection, bowed in the shadow. Heero licked his lips nervously once to give him time to form his words clearly, eyes going dark in apology. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

"Yeah," Duo snorted, giving leeway to an unenthusiastic sliver of a smile and lethargically tipping up the rim of his ever-present black baseball hat. "Forgot you were harboring a criminal. That's alright. I'd rather forget about me, too."

"I apologize. I promised I wouldn't turn you in and I-"

"And you didn't." Duo's violet eyes flashed with a potent mix of lethal sincerity and twisted humor. "Listen. Mistakes are fine, just don't screw up twice. After that, nothing'll be certain for you but death and taxes. That's a promise."

A string of half-morose laughter followed and Duo patted the driver happily on the shoulder again. Great. His energy instantly recovered. "So, too busy watching the road to pull over for some chow? I need nourishment or I'll wither away. And you would absolutely hate that."

Heero glanced up into the mirror again, after momentarily scoping out the road and glancing at the flashing green numbers of the clock. "You only slept for three hours. You seemed like you were tired enough to sleep until Thursday. What happened?"

"Aw," Duo purred from the backseat, accenting with a stylishly flippant flick of his wrist. He slung his boots nonchalantly up onto the seat and crossed them at the ankles. "That's nothing. Wait until I'm so damned exhausted that I'm actually grumpy. You won't see a glimpse of these divining eyes open for weeks."

"Nice to know."

A symphony of joints popping fired in close succession as the criminal cattily curved his arms into an arch in the air above his head and kneaded his bony knuckles simultaneously. His shoulder-length, chestnut brown hair tossed for an instant as he cracked the joints in his neck, like the erratic tattoo of drums. A short silence followed as he put his feet down and Duo once again propped his head on the fabric of the seat, tossing his arms fluidly out in front of himself and letting them dangle in the air. He sighed and crudely scratched his entire right cheek.

"What about you? You've been working nonstop. You must be famished, too," the bohemian lilted, shifting his head toward Heero and his perfectly blue little human eyes. "Driving always drains all the energy out of me. To me, it's just stressful, trying to color in the lines like that-following the rules." He grunted and flashed a bit of tongue in a sour raspberry at nobody and nothing in particular.

"Yeah," Heero grunted, mechanically shifting the truck into the faster lane, "if you don't know how to drive."

The notorious con man grinned, taking the slight in a burst of humor. "Running from the law is also stressful, if you're afraid of breaking those rules." The remark was blatantly aimed at Heero and although it was strange, there was something so awfully truthful that it stung a nerve in the Japanese man's brain. His blue eyes flickered to Duo's for an instant, and then frowned sullenly.

"Come on, don't pout at me," Duo quipped. "It's not my fault the world's shoved a pole up your ass, and certainly don't look to me to pop it out for you. Now, look, you're crotchety, and I'm starving. This calls for some Mexican takeout."

"Italian."

"Chinese."

"French."

"Japanese," Duo said finally. His catty smirk burst wide open when the traveler finally conceded defeat by sullenly returning to watching the intermittent yellow lines blur past. It wasn't the gesture itself that plastered a smile across the criminal's face, it was the delectable glowering frown he advertised. It was sweet enough to practically lick of his face, Duo mused playfully. And that made him even more ravenous.

Sunrays glistened off the blades of grass endlessly as they rippled in the wind. The heat cut through the air and settled on the shoulders of one Heero Yuy, sitting noiselessly on the grass. Around him, trees spotted the landscape, gray, curving lines of cement wove through the shade, and the general pleasant sounds of summer lulled through the air. It was invigorating but still so incredibly tranquil, Heero thought as he crossed his legs and leaned into the sun, sitting alone on a sweeping low plain in the city's central park. They'd stopped once they'd reached a new city to order lunch.

Right now, the black hole successfully remained distant and powerless over him, along with the nagging cornflower blue eyes of his appointed girlfriend. Concerns had dropped like bricks and remained scattered in the cabin of the Isuzu, now sleeping peacefully in the shade at the edge of the bustling, industrial road.

Criminal record erased from immediate consequence with a stunning white smile, Duo soon sauntered beside him, bringing the oriental aromas of his meal with him. With feline grace, the bohemian sat down in the grass without uttering noise, offering a grin and some tempura and udon noodles too. Heero nodded and sat up straighter in the presence of the social criminal, solidly possessed with modesty. It was a bit embarrassing to act unprofessional around the bohemian, as ridiculous and nearly hypocritical as it sounded when he thought about it, but there was always a certain nerve twisted in him when he was around that cunning smile that wouldn't relax.

Maybe because it was he was in the custody of a nefarious con man and his life itself was clutched between sticky fingers.

Duo quickly handed the traveler his lunch and begin to chat lightly about sweet nothings, about the clips of conversation he'd heard while working his way through the restaurant. Heero listened quietly while the obviously gregarious, bright-eyed man talked to him, to himself, to nobody in particular. Beneath the sunny warm tones and considerate cadence, Heero swore something lurked. He quickly dissipated the idea when the rounded face of his subject turned to him and commented on something with a grin.

"Don't you think?"

Heero searched for an answer, but only managed to scrape up a half-hearted nod. Duo laughed and shifted his attention to his meal. "You're quite the attentive one, traveler. Maybe I should chain you to the bumper to keep your head out of the clouds, huh?" The bohemian clicked the plastic hashi at him in a kittenish gesture, his gaunt fingers strangely beautiful as they prodded at him. "Pay attention!"

He paid the final comment no mind and tastefully began to eat his rice dish, strewn with vegetables, a moderate spread of sauce, and miniature slices of meat and an anchovy set artfully on top. "How far do you think we have left to travel?" he asked, vaguely scowling at something. "And when is this deadline you're so concerned with meeting? If I'm going to accompany you, I need information."

"Completely agree," Duo said. He licked the sauce trail from a noodle from the edge of his lip, pausing to luckily chew the food. "But why worry about that now, Heero? We've got sunshine on our backs and food in our bellies, so why make much ado about nothing? It's time to relax!"

Heero frowned. "I don't need to relax. I'm fine," he retorted sullenly.

His flickering, dark blue eyes settled on his own complimentary hashi, or chopsticks, now pinching the rather dead and rather repulsive anchovy. Every vegetarian atom in the Japanese man's stomach paled and cringed at the bitter marine aroma. Seconds later, a pair of red utensils descended with a clack and in a blur, the meat had disappeared into the bohemian's cunning jaws. Heero glowered at him, amazed with Duo's overtly brash attitude as he happily inhaled the seafood.

"Mmmm. That's always been my favorite part of these dishes, ya know."

"You know that that was rude in my culture."

Duo quickly shoveled a burst of rice into his mouth, decadently doused with gratis soy sauce, and luckily the smile diminished as to hide the mashing food. "Don't talk to me about cultural disrespect, my good man," the bohemian muttered as he scraped the final grains of rice into his mouth with his dark red hashi. Duo flashed the bottom of the bowl as he lifted it his mouth and tapped the scraps into his ravenous mouth. When the dish sat in his lap, completely emptied out, Heero received a toothy leer.

"Besides, you weren't going to eat that. Believe me, I just did you one fat favor."

With a withering tone, Heero snorted. "How would you know?"

"Simple." Hashi clacked at him, accenting the cunning smile. "You're a vegetarian. First of all, you turned down the waitress's offer for sausage in the most blatantly vegan way, and secondly, I can smell it."

"Smell it?" Heero asked skeptically.

"Yeah." The bohemian laughed to himself, chewing the piquant, saucy food. "At the carnival grounds. Neither your breath or your mouth tasted like any kind of meat at all. I can tell these things. In fact, it tasted just like peaches and whiskey. Sort of like kissing a walking breath mint."

At the mention of their meeting in the gypsy tent, not even a shade of embarrassment rose to Duo's face, only a wicked broad grin. That did not apply to Heero, however, who stumbled over the memory and turned a slowly heating face down to the innocent and plain food. His thin lips pinched nervously.

It didn't help that Duo snickered moments later, smugly beaming at the blue-eyed traveler's profile. Though the flirtation was absolutely delicious, Duo knew it couldn't continue for long and quickly occupied his thoughts with his equally ravenous thirst. The paper take-out bag ruffled loudly as the bohemian fished out his bottle of Coca-Cola, compliments of a near-by vending machine. It hissed, the cap was removed, and Duo took a lengthy swig, sighing happily and smacking his mouth lusciously. Heero ignored it and politely chewed his rice.

Duo, as quickly as he could seduce with his smile of temptation, finished his meal and set the take-out box on the grass. Heero peered at him cautiously as the black-clad criminal lifted his backside of the ground and produced a rather crumpled paper map from his back pocket. Momentarily, his tongue slipped out of his mouth and licked away a spot of sweet sauce. The traveler scowled at him, if only accustomed to frowning at such things.

The bohemian flattened the half-tattered map across his crossed legs and hummed quietly to some random tune while his eyes scanned across the labyrinth of intersecting red and blue lines. For a moment or two, they remained in silence. The expanse of sky overhead was dotted only by the bravest of clouds and general silence only permeated by the obligatory rattle and hum of traffic and the callings of songbirds and sparrows flitting from tree to tree. Duo noiselessly reviewed the map, soaking in the image of where a dark, marker-inked line wove erratically amongst the urban sprawl depicted. It was strange first of all for the bohemian to ever be happy with silence and not reach for music or indistinct chatter to pacify his time, and doubly strange to see him doing anything that even remotely resembled studying. Heero was still leaning over his steaming meal, Prussian eyes flickering and carefully examining the curious bohemian. And even more strangely, it was Heero who soon couldn't stand the lingering quiet as it began to shiver and itch beneath his skin.

"How far is Cinq from here?" the Japanese man asked, glancing up to Duo's face.

The shocks didn't cease. Instead of automatically flashing a slaying grin in his direction and injecting some sort of relish into his voice, Duo calmly skittered his eyes around the map and answered evenly, reservedly. Obviously there was something separating the two veneers, but there was no telling when he would exchange them for the other or why. "A little ways yet. Even making excellent time it'll still take at least two days." He shifted the map, unfolding another section, equally wrinkled and exhausted with ink lines, so that the urban area of Cinq came into view. "Not to worry, though. If we elude the authorities, which we will, everything will work out."

"That's good."

Duo quickly shoveled a strawberry pocky stick into his mouth and chewed as he intently studied the map, always scanning for something. "Fantastic," he added dryly.

"You're not concerned about the two hunters from his morning, either?"

"We'll be long gone again before they even dream of catching a whiff of us, Heero," Duo said, knocking back another drink of sugary carbonation. "That's how good fugitives survive. We run before we can be seen, we throw off our tracks before we are tracked, and we kill before we are killed. We throw away everything. We're homeless creatures."

The stinging, dark expression that visited the bohemian's face before slipping away did not escape him, and Heero leaned back, his eyes still loathing leaving Duo's profile. "Are you well enough to drive now?"

"Yeah," Duo said with a shrug. "Don't fuss. I'll be awake for a decade now."

"Wonderful," Heero said silently, so that barely audible bursts of air left his lips, a true exercise of muttering beneath one's breath.

"Isn't it, though?" The bohemian spoke casually, somehow able to detect the softest noise. The small, pointed look that landed on Duo's cherub-shaped face was dulled by the brash chewing sounds he made, sacrificing another strawberry candy stick to his hunger. He finally looked up to Heero's Asian face and made only a half-hearted smile as welcoming.

"So, how's the paper progressing?" Duo asked glibly, ceasing in his studies to crumple up {his way of folding} the road map in his lap. Heero was half-disappointed to see the circus act slip neatly into place, white teeth beaming just as brightly as ever. "Need anything else from me? Beside what I mentioned before, nothing's off limits. Fetishes, phobias, childhood infatuations-just ask and it's yours to know."

"Yeah," Heero said. There was an opportunity here for him, and he would hate to let it pass unfruitful. "Would you mind if I asked you a rhetorical question?"

"Hold on. Is it one of those, 'My friend has a problem with his herpes and I'm really just asking for him,' kind of rhetorical question?" Duo quipped happily.

"No."

"Oh, good. Fire away then, traveler."

Heero would continue, as requested, but that didn't stop him from giving him a mild suspicious look. It only fed the hungry leer on the bohemian's face. "Go on," Duo grinned.

Heero paused again anyway. He felt stupid for asking, but it would have gnawed at him if he hadn't. "If you could make anyone understand you and what you've done in the past, who? The one person you could confess your regrets to."

"How 'bout that big guy in the sky that everybody seems so intent on?"

Heero only narrowed his eyes slightly at the joking response. "Besides God."

The bohemian smirked in response. "Ya got me, I guess."

Duo leaned back, the expression on his face quirked slightly and his violet eyes bright in the heavy dousing of sunlight spread across his shoulders. A finger rubbed thoughtfully at his chin, stroking along his notable cheekbones, and the pure cunning wit of his smirk dimmed.

"Good one," he congratulated the traveler. "Well, besides you too, since you are my official biographer or the only one in the world who would give a shit to do so, I really wish I knew what I was doing." A string of laughter quickly spilled from his lips as he lowered his gaze to the grass undulating in the wind. And it sunk knives into Heero's chest to witness it. It was unexplainable, but somehow he hated it when he laughed like that. Like he hated every second of it.

"Well, despite how it may seem, I don't enjoy this life of crime. I never wanted it. Never. But circumstances arise that change you forever, I think, and you can either fight the tide and be dashed on the rocks, or go with them and just try to fill the gap that it eats into you." The bohemian scoffed again and casually tucked the stray bangs behind his ears, still grinning emptily out into space. "I mean, I don't know if you know what I mean, but you have to do something to fill that gap, no matter how deep, or otherwise it eats you alive. And I chose this. I hate it, but it fills me momentarily and it doesn't hurt anymore for a while."

Slowly, Duo lifted his head to face Heero. And it was wiped clean of emotions, just a hollow face sketched on the blackboard with the most intricate chalks.

"Well," he sighed with false happiness, getting to his feet with feline liquid grace and patting the dirt off his hips. "I'll see you in the truck. Like I said, we've gotta make good time to Cinq if we wanna see the fireworks."

Heero paused, blinking in the rift left in the bohemian's wake, before rapidly seeking out a garbage can and disposing off his mostly finished entrée to flash after the slim, disappearing shadow named Duo Maxwell. But beneath his steely face countless wires pulsated endlessly with electricity, sparking and uncertain, when the words were replayed in his memory, each lilt and inflection of the Eros voice pristine and perfect.

'Just try to fill the gap.'